Fast forward to April this year and that titanic battle with Benn. It’s worth remembering that Benn had not proven himself at welterweight, nor had he impressed in recent bouts against Peter Dobson and Rodolfo Orozco. Yet he gave Eubank – supposedly one of the best middleweights in the world – an almighty scare. Benn, who had never fought at either world class or middleweight, found the target time and time again. That Eubank won the fight on points, even though the stress of making weight alongside the gruelling nature of the bout resulted in a two-night stay in hospital, created the illusion that he still had more to give. After all, he had just won the biggest fight of his life, one witnessed by millions. However, had that version of Eubank instead been in against someone like Hamzah Sheeraz, for example, it now seems improbable that victory would have been his. Improbable, too, that he would have returned to camp barely three months later.
